1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus, such as a copying machine or a laser beam printer. The present invention also relates to an image forming system including the image forming apparatus and sheet processing devices that carry out post-processing, such as sheet sorting or stapling.
2. Description of the Related Art
In an existing image forming system, usually, sheet processing devices individually have storage devices (ROMs) storing control programs, and the image forming system is controlled according to the control programs stored in the ROMs of the individual sheet processing devices.
For example, according to Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2003-345599, when control programs stored in the ROMs of a plurality of connected sheet processing devices are updated, control programs for updating the sheet processing devices are stored together in a hard disk or the like, and the sheet processing devices are updated sequentially.
However, when rewriting (downloading) of control programs is executed sequentially for a plurality of sheet processing devices connected to an image forming apparatus, until downloading for one sheet processing device is completed, downloading for another sheet processing device is not started. Thus, the downloading times for all the sheet processing devices directly add up, so that it takes a considerable time to finish downloading for an image forming system as a whole.